Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Marco Ruffini
Sixteenth-Century Paduan Annotations to the First Edition of Vasari's Vite (1550)
Published in
Renaissance Quarterly 62 (2009), pp. 748-808
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| Domenico Campagnola, Enthroned Madonna with Child and Saints, 1537, Civic Museums of Padova Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The first annotations to Vasari's Lives
The
specimen on which Marco Ruffini has worked is preserved at the Beinecke Library
at Yale with the signature 1987 441 1. It only consists of the first volume of
a Torrentiniana edition (1550) and
contains probably the earliest footnotes, in chronological terms, among those which
reached us [1]. To be precise, the author distinguished immediately the
presence of two annotators in the volume; the first one took presumably his
notes around 1563; the second definitely after 1581. The first note taker,
therefore, produced his written records before the second edition of the Lives was published: the Giuntina was released in 1568.
In both
cases, however, we are faced with two anonymous, who almost certainly lived in
Padua. Great part of the annotations was the work of the first annotator. In
line with a set of several elements presented in the margin notes, he seems he
was particularly close to the Paduan painter Domenico Campagnola, mentioned on
several occasions. Campagnola was included in the list of those great Venetian
artists, whom the anonymous note taker placed on the same level of Michelangelo
and Raphael; he was also the only oral source cited in the margin notes and,
interestingly, his name also appeared at the end of the work (i.e. in the conclusion
of the first volume, as the second is absent) in a central location, that would
look like as a signature of ownership. This was however not the case, not so
much because on that occasion the name of the Paduan artist was deleted, but
mostly because his original handwriting is known from another document and does
not correspond to that of the note taker.
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| Domenico and Giulio Campagnola, Stories of the Live of the Virgin, Scuola del Carmine, Padua Source: Threecharlie via Wikimedia Commons |
Indexing the Lives
It is
beyond doubt, in my view, that the main goal of the first note taker was to
index the work, indicating the most salient points. To be precise, he indexed
only parts of the volume, because the absence of any graphic sign indicates
that only certain parts of it were read, according to selection criteria that
are not yet well understood. Ruffini noted that, except for the dedicatory
letter to the deeds of Cosimo I, the pages which were read can be summarized in
five groups: from Cimabue to Giotto; from Taddeo Gaddi to Lorenzo Monaco; from
Gentile da Fabriano to Francesco d’Angelo di Giovanni, and finally from Francesco
Francia to Perugino (see pp. 786-87).
The need to
index the work testified most probably a circumstance: the first annotator (and
of course also the second) did not have at their disposal the second and final
volume of the Torrentiniana edition, which in fact ended up with a large
editorial index. Another evidence on the subject is linked to the fact that the
margin notes often concerned "modern" artists, i.e. those living
after the first decades of Cinquecento which concluded the first volume of the Torrentiniana; therefore, it would have been
more logical to put them in the last tome.
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| Stefano dall'Arzere, Nativity of Jesus and Adoration of the Magi, Scuola del Carmine, Padua Source: Threecharlie via Wikimedia Commons |
Criticizing Vasari
The index,
however, was not the only task undertaken by the anonymous annotator, as he
included in the margin notes also criticism to his pro-Florentine attitude and his
underestimation of the "Lombard" artists; moreover he also added
(few) pieces of information to supplement those of Vasari and (very few) assessments:
in one case, a harsh criticism of the altarpiece by Francesco Francia in the
Cathedral of Ferrara (which he personally viewed); in two other cases, statements
which were mentioned as judgments made by Campagnola.
We already
spoke of the criticism vis-à-vis Vasari because of his pro-Florentine attitude.
At the end of the volume, the annotator inserted the following considerations (which
are here reproduced verbatim in the original Italian text of the XVI century
and translated in English):
" Nota chommo
questo bon homo de Giorgio aretino nara in queste sue vite alcune cose sue che
non le direbono la boca del forno, et le cose necessarie lui pone da banda; ove
si ha veduto mai lodar tanto un paese et biasimar l’altro, chommo fa questo
ravanelo, il qual exalta tanto li soi fiorentini et biasma tanto li altri et
non vede; el poverelo, che la vera virtù et il spirito de la pictura, che è il
colorito a ogio, è venuto da queste bande?" (Translation by Ruffini, p. 765: See how this good man of Giorgio Aretino reports in these lives some of his opinions that not even the mouth of an oven would say. And he neglects important things, so much that nobody ever saw praising so much one country and blaming the order as this radish head does; for he exalts so much his own Florentines and blames so much the others, and does not see, poor man, that the true virtue and spirit of painting is the oil painting, and that it came from these regions).
A text followed
presenting a biography of Titian, whose life was absent, as is known, in the Torrentiniana. He was called here “stupor in tera et vero inmitator de la
natura” (the most amazing on earth and the true imitator of nature). Remember
that Vecellio was definitely still alive when the note taker compiled his margin
comments. It was, in essence, a brief summary of Titian’s works. After 1581,
that is at least five years after the artist's death, the text was completed by
the second author, who not coincidentally used the remote past rather than the
present tense used by his predecessor. The modesty of the contribution of the
second annotator let Ruffini state (and cannot be otherwise) that he did not
know and had not read the biography of Titian published in the meantime by
Vasari in the second edition of his Lives
(1568).
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| Titian, Assumption of the Virgin, 1516-1518, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari Source: Wikimedia Commons |
It has been
mentioned that the first note taker did not fail to criticize the writer
Aretino for his bias in favour of the Tuscan artists. There is no doubt that he
also sinned of local vanity, but in the opposite direction. So the figures of
Michelangelo and Raphael (seemingly, he did not grasp the difference in value between
them in Vasari’s reading) were contrasted with those of Titian, Tintoretto,
Paolo Veronese, but also of Giuseppe Salviati, a Tuscan very appreciated in
Veneto and Bonifacio de' Pitati. If anything, it is surprising the presence of
an all in all secondary figure like Rocco Marconi. It is even more remarkable
that Lorenzo Lotto was mentioned. His critical misfortune is well known to all,
as summarized by a life consumed between Bergamo and the Marche and
the famous letter sent to him by Aretino, in which the sender made mercilessly fun
of him, by placing Lotto in comparison with the triumphs of Titian. It was much
more logical - after all – to see also the names of Domenico Campagnola and
Stefano dell'Arzere, fully justified by their Paduan origins.
Criticisms
can certainly be addressed with reference to specific statements, such as when to
the beauty of the cathedral of Florence (the most beautiful church in
Christendom according to Vasari) the annotator objected that he did wonder what
should be ever said about the Basilica of San Marco. But more generally, all
statements were built around the same concepts that we have already read in the
above quotation: the true spirit of painting is colour, and colour is Venetian
par excellence.
Marco
Ruffini did very well to highlight that, even more importantly than the substantial
judgment included in one or another margin note (with specific contributions
which, after all, are very poor) the sample of the Lives in question is particularly important because it showed a
climate, an attitude, a way to acknowledge the Lives in Veneto after the publication of the first edition. In this
context, the margin notes of the Beinecke sample were substantially in line
with the first printed answers on the subject, consisting of the Dialogo sulla pittura (Dialogue on painting)
by Lodovico Dolce (1557) and De
antiquitate urbis Patavii et claris civibus patavinis (On the antiquity of
the city of Padua and the famous Paduan citizens) by Bernardino Scardeone (1560).
It prevailed there the exaltation of colour vis-à-vis drawing. With one
difference: Dolce and Scardeone represented in some way a
"theoretical" and "scholarly" response, a response which
may even have been drafted in Latin and which our annotator did definitely never
read. In the case of the annotations, instead, we are facing a less polished prose.
Evidently, this was then expression of a common feeling between a very
restricted cultural elite and less sophisticated layers of the society.
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| Rocco Marconi, Christ and the Women of Canaan, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Accepting Vasari
In
principle, it should almost be given for granted that a Venetian note taker should
have somehow criticized Vasari for his partisanship. The most interesting pages
of Ruffini's essay - in my opinion - are those in which he explained that the
criticism also implied an acceptance of the central role and in some respective
"normative" function of the Lives.
One thing is worth mentioning first of all: the note taker criticised the
Tuscan artist for the known reasons, but never called into question any of his
statements, which are considered therefore of the utmost reliability. The fact
that a crucial element of the comments was the creation of an index means that
Vasari was considered as a reliable source, and in fact the margin notes also "reveal an unconditional acceptance of the
information contained in the book. Thus, in more than one case the first annotator
indexes wrong information: understandable in the case of the Gondi
Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, a work distant in time and space,
but surprising in the case of the equestrian wooden model, now in Palazzo della Ragione [editor's note in Padua], that Vasari mistakenly attributed to Donatello" (p. 787). The famous
(false) case according to which Francesco Francia was deemed to have died at
the view of the Santa Cecilia, when it had been dispatched by Raphael to Bologna, is
in this sense exemplary: not only the note taker had no doubt whatever about
the veracity of the episode, but apparently the story impressed him so much to
be "reused" it, this time to the favour of Titian. So the first
annotator wrote in the brief biography of Vecellio:
“et credo chommo che
la tavola di Santa Cecilia, fata da Raphael d’Urbino posse extasi al Franza,
tal me[nte] che, commo si dice, lui morì, così parimente questa et altre opere
che lui ha fato, non solamente ha partorito terore neli moderni pictori, ma ancor
demostrano che li antichi non sapeano niente de la pictura” (... And I believe that – like the panel
of Santa Cecilia, made by Raphael of Urbino, caused such a shock to Francesco
Francia that he died, as it is well known – similarly this and other works which
Titian made did not only create a veritable shockwave among the modern
painters, but even demonstrated that the ancient masters did not know anything
about painting) (p. 799).
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| Equestrian wooden model, 1466, Palazzo della Ragione, Padua Source: http://www.blivin.it/cavallo-palazzo-della-ragione/ |
The
attitude is clear: whatever Vasari had written was worthy of being studied. If
anything, it is assumed that all what was not written corresponded to a
voluntary omission, aiming at establishing the supremacy of the Tuscan school over
the others. So, in another margin note, he wrote:
“Nota chommo che
questo [G]iorgio aretino è molto apassionato contro lombardi, ma faci quanto
che lui vole, bisongnia che lui habi pacienzia, che ancor in queste parti sonno
homeni excelenti”. (Take
good note that this Giorgio from Arezzo has strong feelings against the
Lombards, but whatever he wants, he needs to show some tolerance, because also in
these regions there are excellent people). (p. 798)
He did not
even consider the possibility that Vasari simply ignored facts. This attitude was
indeed probably dictated by the huge mass of information provided by the writer
from Arezzo, compared to which the few handwritten notes in the sample show how
difficult it was to collect news about works and artists in the second half of
the sixteenth century.
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| Lorenzo Lotto, The Alms of Sr. Anthony, 1542, Basilica dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Padua and Venice
It is
worthwhile to mention a final point: the notes in the Beinecke specimen, while confirming
the Paduan origin of the authors, also show that the original dualism between
Padua and Venice, which was solved in the victory of the latter at the end of
the fourteenth century, was by then outdated. The role of Padua was implicitly
recognized as secondary and not coincidentally the biographical notes added by
the note taker were those relating to Titian (understood as Venetian). The
Vasari’s text on Mantegna had apparently even not been read; in fact, the
annotator forgot to state that he was born in Padua and not in Mantua, as wrongly
mentioned by Vasari. Almost two centuries after the war events between the two
cities, Venice took decidedly the upper hand as a cultural centre of the
northeast, and had become the centre of attraction for all intellectuals.
NOTES
[1] For a
survey of the annotated samples of Vasari's Lives
see Giovanni Mazzaferro, The annotated specimens of Vasari's Lives (and in
particular the sample 3).
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